


Unlucky Strike

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: even the mistakes aren't really mistakes at all [9]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: F/M, Jealousy, Kinga is dangerous, Max is so confused, Possessive Behavior, Slow Burn, bowling, probably to herself but definitely to others, random cameos from cartoons because why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 00:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11001762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Some of the Gizmonic grad students want to set up a bowling league. Kinga is completely unprepared for the feelings that get stirred up in the same bowling alley she and Max had been to as kids. She said things would change, but this isn't what she meant.





	Unlucky Strike

**Author's Note:**

> Ohhhh shit, it's starting to get serious now.

"Do you want to go bowling tonight?" Kinga asked as she dripped solution into a titration she was working on. They’d been toying with the liquid media solution for the better part of a month, but it had only been a few days since they’d decided to get the audio fixed before developing it into video as well, and Kinga felt like they’d been making excellent progress in those days.

"Uh... sure, why not," Max said. He didn't really have fond memories of bowling, but he imagined that Kinga's memories didn't exactly match up with his of the same events. She'd been too young to pick up on the things that had bothered him as a teenager. "What's the occasion?"

"Some of the grad students want to set up a league... you were pretty decent with a bowling ball when we were younger."

"You weren't," he pointed out, trying not to smile, and she huffed a breath and kept drip-drip-dripping from her pipette into the flask.

"You never saw me bowl without the gutter bumpers. You have no idea what kind of a bowler I am."

"Okay, fair." Suddenly the solution in front of Kinga went from translucent blue to thickly pink.

"Ha! Yes! Hit it with the sound waves, Max." Max fit a speaker over the mouth of the flask and blasted the Spice Girls, only slightly muffled through the glass. Kinga gave him an incredulous look. " _That's_ what you picked?"

"I thought you liked this song," he said innocently, wiggling a little to "Wannabe" and trying not to burst out laughing at the look on Kinga's face. "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends," he sang along, completely off key, and she rolled her eyes.

"Please. I'm your only friend."

"That's not true. It's true in the other direction, but not that one."

"I'm your only friend who matters for anything," she said, and he shrugged slightly. The moment the song ended she moved the speaker away and held up the flask, swishing the liquid around. "Okay. Let's see how it worked." Carefully, she poured the fluid into the containment device, then hit the switch to send it through the stereo tubes. "Wannabe" started playing from both speakers, sounding tinny and with a hint of Max's terrible vocals, but correctly balanced between the speakers. "Oh, fantastic! Max, it worked!"

"I can hear that," Max said, watching her bounce in excitement. "Congratulations!"

"It still needs more refinement, but getting dual-channel sound is a huge step forward! I can make this work!" In her excitement, she hugged him, and he was too shocked to hug her back before she pulled away. "This is perfect timing, too. We can brag about it at bowling tonight."

They stopped by both their apartments to change before heading to the bowling alley, the same one they'd gone to decades ago for birthday parties and family fun nights. Max hesitated at the doors, but Kinga walked right in, and he followed her like he always did. The place hadn't changed much-- the heavy stench of cigarette smoke and spilled beer had been dialed back, but the smoke had permeated the ugly orange walls and could never be entirely eliminated. The ancient scoreboards had been upgraded at some point in the last twenty years but still looked about twenty years out of date. He was pretty sure that the bowling shoes hadn't been replaced in about that long, either. The music wasn't the same as it had been when he was a kid... but it had been replaced by the stuff that had been on the radio when he'd been a kid.

The Gizmonic crew had taken over the last four lanes, a motley assortment of exhausted looking grad students and wired-looking undergrad assistants. Drake caught sight of them and waved them over after they got their shoes. "Kinga! Great, we needed two more on this lane. You know Amy and Jonah and Pam already, right?"

"I don't," Max said, offering his hand to the other people standing around. "Hi, I'm Max." Amy was a petite and very cute Asian girl, Jonah was a ridiculously tall guy with thick-rimmed glasses, and Pam was a chubby blonde woman who gave Max a predatory grin and an extra squeeze before she let his hand go. He had no idea how to react to that sort of avaricious glance, never having been looked at like that before in his life, so he just ducked his head and went to pick a bowling ball from the rack.

"I haven't been bowling in a while," Kinga said as she sat down to switch her shoes. "But I've never been bowling anywhere except this alley."

"Oh, did you grow up around here?" Jonah asked. "None of the rest of us are from this area."

"My dad and Max's dad were both Gizmonic employees, actually."

"Neat! My parents were disappointed when I chose Gizmonic. They wanted me to go into business school," Amy said, scrunching her nose in disgust. "Totally not where my ambition lies."

"I always knew I'd come to Gizmonic," Kinga said. "It was my destiny."

"Destiny, huh?" Drake laughed. "That's a bit fantastical for folks of science such as us."

"Speak for yourself," Pam said. "I ended up here because a gypsy woman told me I'd get knocked up if I went to my first choice school. And I think working on Drake's pet project might be making me sterile. Not that I'm complaining." Kinga went to pick her ball and Max took her seat to swap his shoes. Pam hip-checked his shoulder, almost bowling him over. "What's your story?"

"My dad was her dad's assistant. Same destiny." Max shrugged. Drake's eyes widened and he looked back at Kinga.

"Wait... Your dad was Doctor Forrester? The batshit crazy one who killed his assistant?"

"The reason sub-level 13 is only used for storage now?" Jonah looked awed. "The one there's all those horror stories about?"

"He didn't kill him," Kinga said defensively, flushing in embarrassment. "Those are vicious rumors." Max rolled his eyes, but he was looking down to tie his laces and no one caught the expression. "It's ancient history anyways. No one cares what was happening at Gizmonic thirty years ago. What's important is what we're doing now."

"I'll drink to that," Drake said cheerfully. "Come on, let's get this game going." Kinga came over to sit next to Max while everyone else took their turns, and Max fixed her with a dubious expression.

"Shut up," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"Shut up with your face, then. Don't look at me like that."

"You're such a liar."

"You prefer I tell the truth?" she hissed. "Yeah, sure, my dad murdered your dad like six dozen times, no big deal. Cause that's gonna fly." She glared at him and added, "I wonder if you're as death-resistant as he was."

"Don't be like that," Max sighed. "Can't we just have fun? You're the one who wanted to socialize. Stop threatening me and enjoy yourself."

"They're not mutually exclusive activities," she said, but she smiled at him. He shook his head and got up to get his ball as the lane re-set from Jonah's strike.

"Nice one," he said as he passed Jonah. The taller man grinned.

"Thanks. Bowling was my only sport in high school."

"Unfair advantage," Amy said, but Pam just snorted and leaned against the scoring computer.

"Don't worry. I'll knock him down a peg. Pegging guys is kind of my specialty." Drake choked and beer spurted out of his nose and he devolved into a coughing fit, alarming Amy and Jonah and making Pam look incredibly smug. The outburst was perfectly timed to make Max completely duff his shot, sending the ball straight into the gutter, and he turned around with a puzzled look to find Kinga looking horrified. "Sorry, cupcake," Pam said. "My fault."

"Uh... no problem," Max said. He kept a wary eye on Pam while he waited for his ball to return, blushing when she blew him a kiss. No one could hear Kinga growl over the 90s pop and the crash and clatter of bowling balls and pins being reset, and no one was paying attention to her furious expression with Drake still wheezing from his accidental alcohol aspiration. Max knocked down a few pins on the second frame and came back to Kinga still a bit bemused. "I missed something..."

"Just gross vulgarity," Kinga muttered, glaring daggers at Pam as she got up to get her ball. She came back twice as furious after two gutterballs, and Max caught her wrist and pulled her away from the lanes before she could sit.

"Come on, I think you could use a drink."

"I think I could use a shiv," Kinga spat. "This was a bad idea."

"You might have fun if you relax," Max said soothingly, not entirely sure why she was so mad but pretty sure he could defuse her anger. "It was your idea, after all."

"Don't remind me." The bar looked exactly the same as it had when they were kids, the pegboard menu with yellowed plastic letters, the shelf full of bottom-tier liquor, the skunky smell of the Budweiser on tap soaked into the thin ugly carpet, the booth where they'd sat eating fluorescent orange nachos while their dads dueled it out on the lane. Kinga shuddered. "I'm getting a hangover just thinking about drinking any of this."

"As if you don't get a hangover every time you drink anyways," he teased her, and she stuck her tongue out at him. "Have a terrible drink here and I'll make you a better one after we leave."

"I suppose that's acceptable." They came back to the lane with screwdrivers that tasted like they'd been made with Tang and paint thinner, just in time to see Jonah pick up a spare despite Pam's heckling.

"You're up, sweetness," Pam said, leering at Max and making him blush again as he handed his drink to Kinga and went to get his ball. This time when Kinga glared at her Pam noticed, but it only made her grin wider.

"How's the drink?" Amy asked, distracting Kinga from trying to kill Pam with her mind.

"It's disgusting," Kinga said honestly, "but that's par for the course at this place."

"You mean it's even on the frame," Pam said. "Because it's a bowling alley."

"Same difference," Amy said. "Is it better or worse than frat party booze?"

"I've never been to a frat party," Kinga said, lip curling in disgust at the thought. "It's really terrible."

"Eh, I've probably had worse," Amy said, and headed toward the bar. Kinga's lip stayed curled, and Pam blew her a kiss right as Max turned around only to pause in confusion at the fury in Kinga's eyes.

"I usually get better at bowling if I get a little tipsy," he said, coming over to claim his drink and take a deep swallow, face screwing up in its wake. "Ugh, that's awful."

"Everything about this is awful," Kinga muttered. He patted Kinga's shoulder gently and went to finish his frame, but as he passed Pam she swatted his ass and made him jump in shock. Kinga's grip on her flimsy plastic cup tightened and the screwdriver spilled across her fingers and the already-sticky wooden floor.

"Is he your boyfriend?" Pam asked, poisonously sweet, and that almost stopped Kinga's heart. No. Max wasn't her boyfriend. She'd never laid claim to him like that, never had more than a passing thought in that direction unless she was drunk enough to excuse her mind wandering where it shouldn't go, and yet she was murderously furious to watch Pam flirting with him. She didn't have to name what he was to her to know that Pam was completely out of line.

"He's too good for you," Kinga said, avoiding the question, and Pam's smug look intensified. "Leave him alone."

"Nah," Pam said. "He's awfully cute. Easily flustered. Fun to play with."

"Fuck off," Kinga hissed as Max came back from not quite cleaning up the frame. He looked between them and then at the puddle on the floor, one brow arching inquisitively.

"Your turn," he said, and flinched slightly when Kinga stood up with her fists clenched. "Are you okay?"

"No." She stormed over to the ball return and sent her ball directly into the gutter again.

"Uh... Kinga? Would you mind if I gave you a few pointers?" Jonah asked. She whirled around and he quailed slightly under her gaze. "Um, adjusting your stance and your swing might help." Kinga glared at him for a second and then tossed her head.

"Sure. Fine. Why not." He walked up to her, towering over her, and reached out but paused with his hands a few inches from her shoulders.

"Is this okay?"

"Yeah, get on with it," she snapped. He didn't seem taken aback by her attitude, just settled his hands on her shoulders and shifted her slightly, then dropped his hands to her hips and moved them a little too.

"You tense up when you pull back, if you try not to do that it'll probably do a little good. Just take a couple steps, bring your arm back like this..." One hand on her wrist, he guided her arm back. "And release the ball when you hit the bottom of the arc. See how that works." He gave her an encouraging smile and took a few steps back. She took a deep breath and did as instructed, watching the ball careen its way down the length of the lane and crash into the pins at the end.

"Yes!" She pumped a fist in the air and turned around. Jonah flashed her a thumbs-up, but she barely noticed, immediately focusing on Pam encroaching on Max's personal space and Max's wide-eyed and almost panicked expression when she put her hand on his knee.

"And Kinga makes it on the board! Welcome to the game," Drake said, finishing his beer before getting up to collect his ball. She completely ignored him, walking up to Max and unceremoniously swatting Pam's hand off his knee.

"I told you to fuck off," she said.

"Max didn't," Pam said. "Max doesn't mind, do you, Max?"

"Uh..." His mouth opened and closed a couple of times without producing any coherent words. Pam smirked and replaced her hand a little higher on his leg and he squeaked.

"I'm going to be really clear about this," Kinga growled, leaning down and getting in Pam's face. "Take your fucking hands off of him or I'll take them off of you."

"I'm not scared of you," Pam said, but Max pushed her hand off his thigh.

"Please stop," he managed to say. Pam's brows arched but she made a show of folding her hands in her own lap.

"Whatever you say, cupcake." Max stood up and gave Kinga an untranslatable look, then headed for the restroom. Pam looked up at her. "What's your malfunction, red?"

"I don't have a malfunction, but you're about to."

"Someone's feisty. You're awfully protective of him for a lab partner, you know."

"He's not just my assistant. He's my--" Kinga stalled out for a second. How could she even put into words what Max meant to her? She had to say something. "He's _mine_ ," was the closest she could get to what she meant, and Pam smirked.

"Yeah? Does he know that? Cause he wasn't pushing me away until you did it for him."

"He knows," Kinga flagrantly lied.

"Uh-huh," Pam said, skepticism writ large across her face. "Sure he does. I think you've got some issues to work out, girl."

"I have exactly one issue to work out with you, and I've already made it clear. Leave him alone."

"Hey, I have better things to do than get caught up in some psycho redhead's neuroses," Pam said, standing up and cracking her knuckles. "Like kicking the jolly green giant's ass in bowling. If you'll pardon me." She brushed past Kinga on the way to retrieve her ball, and Kinga took the newly vacated seat and tried not to look as shaken as she felt. Jonah gave her a sympathetic look from his place by the scoreboard computer.

"She's a shit-stirrer," he said. "Lives to rile people up. Total pain in the ass to work with."

"I bet," Kinga said.

"Don't let her get to you. The more you react the more she'll dig in."

"Easy for you to say."

"Believe me, it's a lesson I only learned with great pain," Jonah said melodramatically. "But on the bright side, now I know that I want to go into space because she's not there." Kinga snorted, and Jonah offered her a smile. "Just ignore her."

"Ha! Eat that, Heston!" Pam crowed, pointing down the lane where she'd just scored another strike.

"Only if I can deep-fry it and dip it in chocolate," Jonah said, ambling over to the ball return. "Maybe put some whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles on."

"Stop talking dirty," Pam purred, hip-checking him as they passed. "I like it too much." Kinga noticed Jonah shudder on his way to the lane and bit her lip against a laugh.

Three things happened simultaneously. "Wannabe" started playing on the bowling alley radio, Jonah pulled back to bowl a picture-perfect strike, and Max sat down next to Kinga and nudged her hand with his. "Hey," she said, "you okay?"

"More or less," he said. "I'm not so sure this was a good idea."

"It's not too late to go back to the lab," she said, half-joking. He huffed a laugh and shook his head.

"It's definitely too late to go back to the lab. It's not too late to get a pizza and watch a movie, though..."

"That sounds nice."

"Hey man, you're up," Jonah said, rubbing his left thumb into the hollow of his right hand reflexively. "If the music doesn't throw you off your game."

"Are you kidding? This is my jam," Max said brightly. He wiggled a little as he went to get his ball and Kinga couldn't stifle a giggle. He was such a dork sometimes... most of the time... but he was by far her favorite person, she had to admit. And that much, at least, was easy to admit. She hadn't really thought past that point, but watching him now felt like seeing him in a brand new light, noticing little things that had passed under her acknowledgment until her claim on him was challenged. He was... he was pretty cute, honestly. Solid and reassuring and loyal and oh, crap, Kinga wasn't much given to introspection because it didn't take a whole lot of soul-searching to turn up things she'd rather not know about herself. Including, apparently, an attraction to the guy who'd babysat her since she was a toddler oh god this was terrible. This was really, really bad. She dropped her head into her hands and tried not to groan out loud.

"Way to go, cupcake!" Pam's voice got Kinga to look up just in time for Max to turn around from the third consecutive strike on the lane. He was beaming, but she could only manage a weak smile for him, and his grin swiftly became a look of concern.

"What's wrong?" She shook her head, and he frowned a little. "Really? Okay... it's your turn." For a moment she just looked at him, and he got more confused by the second. Then she stood up and walked to the ball return.

The bowling alley was noisy. People were talking, balls were crashing into pins, the music was loud. But Kinga still heard Max's distressed yelp clearly through the noise, and whirled around with her ball in hand to find Pam's hand still on Max's ass. The sounds of the alley faded, as did the edges of her vision. She couldn't remember ever feeling this furious in her life as she stormed over. All she could hear was the Spice Girls spurring her in her rage.

 _so tell me what you want, what you really really want..._ Pam looked smug until the moment Kinga's ball slammed into her knee and she went down like a ton of bricks.

"I told you to _fuck off_ ," Kinga growled, winding up to hammer her with the ball again. Max caught her arm on the backswing and eased the ball out of her grip, looking half horrified and half impressed.

"Kinga! You can't--"

"You _bitch_ ," Pam howled, lunging for her from the floor.

"Stop it!" Max cried, getting between them. "What the actual fuck, stop it!" Not only did the rest of the players on their lane freeze in shock, so did the players in the lanes around them. After a second Jonah shook himself out of his surprise and stepped in, kneeling down next to Pam. Max set the ball on a seat and grabbed his and Kinga's shoes, then hooked his arm around hers and started hauling her out of the bowling alley. "Come on... oh my god, what were you thinking? You can't assault someone like that!" A bowling alley employee tried to stop them on their way out, but one glance from Kinga's hate-filled eyes and he got out of their way promptly. Max didn't stop dragging Kinga until they were at his car, where he dropped their shoes on the hood and pinned her against the passenger door, shaking her a little with his hands on her shoulders. “Kinga, what the hell?”

“She touched you,” Kinga said flatly, and that got Max to stop still.

“What?”

“She touched you,” Kinga said again. “She did it after you asked her not to. She was making you uncomfortable.”

“So you crippled her with a bowling ball?”

“I warned her.”

“You _threatened_ her.”

“What’s the difference?” Max opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then sighed and dropped his hands.

“You genuinely don’t know the difference or I’d be angry with you.”

“Why would you be angry with me? I was only defending you.”

“ _Why_?” Now it was Kinga’s turn to goldfish. Why? That was the crux of it, wasn’t it?

“Because you didn’t want her to do it,” she said evasively. Max frowned.

“I can defend myself,” he said. “You don’t have a reason to do it for me.”

“You weren’t going to.”

“You didn’t even give me the chance to! I don’t understand, Kinga, since when do I matter enough to you to attack someone for me?”

“Since always,” Kinga said, startled after the words came out of her mouth to realize they were true. “I would always have done it. I was too little to do any damage when we were younger, but I’m not any more. No one gets to touch you like that except--” 

“But you don’t,” Max cut in. “You don’t touch me like that. You don’t want to.”

“How do you know what I want?” He started laughing and she got a little indignant until he took her hands.

“Kinga. You have no self-control. If you wanted to do it, you would have done it by now. You haven’t done it, so I’m pretty sure you don’t want to.” He wasn’t wrong. Of course he wasn’t wrong, he knew her better than anyone. She didn’t know how to explain herself to him-- she couldn’t even explain herself to herself yet-- so she did the next best thing to justifying herself and went balls-to-the-wall toward confusing the hell out of the both of them instead, pulling her hands out of his grasp and taking his face between them, leaning in to catch his mouth with hers.

The sound he made was seventy percent surprise, twenty percent joy, ten percent disbelief, and his mouth tasted like that godforsaken excuse for a screwdriver. He swayed against her and she gasped, caught between the warmth of his body and the chill of the car, shocked at herself for doing it and shocked all over again at how good it felt to be right there. Oh, god, this was dangerous. This was so dangerous. She wondered how long they’d been walking on this thin ice without her noticing. Well, she knew now, and she could never un-know it.

“Kinga…” he sighed, breath warm against her cheek. “I think we need to talk.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

“Not in a parking lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Come home with me?” _Dangerous_ , she thought, but nodded anyways.

“Yeah.”


End file.
